While most of us slept, Portland cricket fans celebrated one of the world’s biggest sporting events.

At 2:30 am, most late-night establishments release the
drunks and lock the doors. But on Saturday, April 2, last call was when
the party really started for one Portland business.

Swagat, an Indian
restaurant on Northwest 21st Avenue and Lovejoy Street, hosted a viewing
party of the 2011 Cricket World Cup final in Mumbai between India and
Sri Lanka.

About 20 fans of
India drummed loudly on the tables as Sri Lanka took the field to bat,
tensely watching India’s bowler hurl the first ball of the game. For the
next eight hours, the fans stayed glued to the TV. The place erupted
with everybody exchanging high-fives when, in an act worthy of ESPN
SportsCenter’s Top 10, a fielder for India made a diving bare-handed
catch.

“I
have watched almost all of the matches in this World Cup,” said Raiyo
Aspandiar, an engineer at Intel in Hillsboro. “I set my body clock so
that I can get up and stay awake. They say there are two religions in
India—cricket and Bollywood.”

Because the match was
13 time zones away, most expats from cricket-playing nations stream the
games online or watch with their families. Although the turnout at
Swagat was modest, the quadrennial Cricket World Cup final is one of the
most-watched sporting events in the world. Cricket is hugely popular
among India’s 1.2 billion people, and similarly so among the 10,000
Indians estimated by the India Cultural Association of Portland to live
in this area.

As TV cameras swept
among the 45,000 spectators at Mumbai’s sold-out Wankhede Stadium,
viewers at Swagat pointed and nodded at the who’s who of India, such as
Aamir Khan, star of the hugely popular film Lagaan.

The final was
preceded last week by a semifinal match between India and Pakistan that
captivated most of South Asia. In a historic act of diplomacy between
rival nuclear powers, the prime ministers of both nations sat together
at the stadium in Mohali, India, to watch their nations compete.

According
to the Associated Press, schools and businesses closed early in
Pakistan and India on March 30 in what became a pseudo-national holiday.
After India secured its place in the final, throngs of people
celebrated in the streets by jumping on cars and lighting fireworks.

“That was what we
call a high-voltage match,” said Tony Tariq, a Pakistani man who works
at a restaurant in downtown Portland. “Now we are all hoping for Sri
Lanka to win.”

The crowd at Swagat
didn’t share that sentiment. The gathering was all Indian save for Krist
Homsi, a native-born American who works in sports science for a
division of Nike and plays in the Oregon Cricket League with Aspandiar.
After 10 years, Homsi is still learning the mechanics of the game.

“It is theater that
plays out,” Homsi said. “Cricket requires a time and effort that is not
part of spoon-fed American sporting culture. It is a game from another
time.”

Unlike with most
American sports, beer is not generally guzzled while watching
cricket—chai tea is the drink of choice. It is considered a gentleman’s
game in which each match pauses twice—once for lunch, once for tea. Some
spectators at Swagat refilled their cups of chai five or six times
throughout the night.

“It’s
not like crack open a six-pack and watch the game,” said Miten Bhatia, a
US Bank branch manager who moved to the United States from Mumbai in
1998. “A lot of families watch cricket. I remember watching it with my
grandmother.”

At one point in the night Swagat owner Srimanth Chinnam went into the kitchen andreturned with platters of samosas. The crowd at Swagat graciously devoured plate after plate.

As
the eight-hour game came to a close Saturday morning with favorite India
battling back to win its second World Cup title, the exhausted crowd
filed out of Swagat into the bright morning, celebrating its first World
Cup win since 1983.

“It
is a very exhilarating feeling,” Aspandiar said. “The last time India
won the World Cup I was here in the United States and there was no way
to watch it. This time I got to see India win.”